Rich site yields clues about Celtic faith and medicine
by http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3276
A grave site found near what is now http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2749, England, may be the first Druid burial place ever found by archeologists. Dated to between 40 and 60 A.D., the find yielded cremated human remains, a board game, medical tools, religious implements and evidence of a psychedelic drink used for divination.
Druids were the priestly and intellectual class of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2225. The Roman general Gaius Suetonius Paulinus led a successful attack on the Druidical “headquarters” on the island of Mona (today called Anglesey), cutting down the sacred oaken groves where the Druids worshipped. The word Druid comes from the Celtic word for “oak” (surviving in English as “door”).
Druid beliefs and teachings are still obscure, but the new find sheds some http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2717 have been closely linked throughout the course of white history, well into the modern age.The chambered Druid grave is part of a set of five discovered in a gravel quarry. Dating from the early Romaan occupation period, it shows Roman influence.
Archaelogist Mike Pitts has published a report on the site in the journal British Archaeology. “This person was clearly a specialist and also clearly wealthy and powerful, as indicated by the special grave and its apparent location within the compound of a ‘chief.’ That would all fit Caesar’s Druid,” he said. The best descriptions of the Druids come from Julius http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=655. The “bog men,” bodies found in peat bogs across Western Europe, were clearly sacrificed, probably for legal reasons, while the infamous gladiatorial combats of the Romans began as a form of “human sacrifice.”
The fact that the Druids consumed drugs for religious purposes is confirmed by the remains of artemisia, the key ingredient in absinthe, the “Green Fairy” beverage of lore which was banned in the late 1800s because of its abuse. The presence of divining rods confirms speculation that European pagan religion was highly oriented towards fortune telling and prediction, as survivals of the folk religion show.
Druids were at the top of the http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=764, who used his name as the title of his famous play.
Interest in Druidism led to some of the first “nationalist” awareness in the UK. http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2735 and other ancient sites.